In a world where people are the heart of any organization, Marching Sheep stands as a beacon of insight and innovation. The ever-evolving landscape of HR is designed to seamlessly align with the business essence and ambitions. In this realm, Sonica Aron and her team stays at the forefront of industry trends and best practices. What truly sets her apart is her motto- “it’s not about volume, it’s about depth.”
With a passion for nurturing talent, Sonica is navigating the delicate balance between individual aspirations and collective goals. This allowed us at CIO Business World to interview, Sonica Aron to know how she is redefining the landscape of organizational growth.
Below Are The Highlights Of The Interview
Brief our audience about your journey as a business leader until your current position at your company. What challenges have you had to overcome to reach where you are today?
I am the Founder and CEO of Marching Sheep, a globally recognized HR consulting firm specializing in OD consulting, Diversity Equity and Inclusion interventions and Bespoke capability building.
An XLRI post- graduate, I have been an HR professional with more than 2 decades of experience. I have worked with reputed companies like Pepsico, Vodafone, Roche Diagnostics and ICI paints. While working at PepsiCo, I was exposed to diverse roles and geographies. I worked in sales and sales HR. I worked in a factory. I also worked in a city as well as in remote and rural areas. This experience helped me realize how diverse people viewed women workforce, worked with, and dealt with them. I was heading the HR function for Philips Consumer Lifestyle business in 2012, when I decided to take a break from the corporate world and founded Marching Sheep in February 2013, with an intention to rollout interventions that truly made a difference to organizations and people’s lives and careers and drive respect and equality for all.
I am a mother of two, and Marching Sheep is my third child. I am extremely passionate about what we deliver as a team, because we impact people. The values at Marching Sheep are Integrity in everything we do, Client orientation, Responsiveness, Attention to detail. My constant reminder to the team is that when I was on the other side of the table, I was always worried about the impact of interventions. So at Marching Sheep, for every assignment, there are stringent measures on outcomes and deliverables.
It was a bumpy ride to reach where the firm is today. When I started Marching Sheep, I understood my craft well, which was HR, but I knew little about running my own business. From understanding the different taxes to legal obligations of running a business, to getting my first client, to learning how to market Marching Sheep and myself as a consultant, making the first website, to attracting the right talent despite being bootstrapped. There were many stereotypes- like my business being my hobby, or a pass-time Endeavor just to earn some pocket change, that a women will not be able to negotiate with clients and many more.
There were many environmental obstacles along the way, from demonetization in the country, or implementation of new tax regime and company laws, and more recently Covid pandemic, which did see drying up of revenues for short spells. But it never dampened the fire in my belly or the steam in my team, driven by the passion of truly making a difference on ground.
I faced a spectrum of challenges, from breaking gender stereotypes to stepping into leadership roles in diverse situations. I was able to overcome these challenges with a sense of ‘I wont give up’, determination, leveraging my past experiences and learnings to create a dynamic and inclusive work environment at Marching Sheep. These challenges have not only shaped me as a business leader but have also contributed to the values and ethos that define my firm today.
Tell Us Something More About Your Company and Its Mission and Vision
We believe in doing meaningful work that touches and impacts lives of the workforce, and in turn builds agile, responsive and great organizations. We will continue to research and evolve our offerings. We wish to enable organizations by building capability within and hence offering more certification programs.
When we work with our clients, all our assignments are sponsored by companies. But whatever we deliver, whether it is a policy revamping, or a culture building assignment, or a capability building intervention, or a long-term engagement in the Diversity, equity inclusion space, our work touches the lives of people both at the personal and professional level. It creates a ripple effect at the societal level. We take pride in living upto our purpose each day- Making a difference to peoples’ lives and careers, and driving respect and equality for all.
Integrity is the core value of our organization. We work closely with the client team to arrive at the scope of the project, deliverables and milestones.
We as a team also keep upgrading ourselves on new technology and concepts to be able to deliver high impact interventions for our clients. Every assignment has multiple consultants engaged, so that balls don’t get dropped, and collective expertise is utilized.
We do not push off the shelf solutions but engage in consultative problem solving with clients, curate customized interventions and deliver ROI driven programs.
It is our purpose- making a difference to organizations and peoples’ lives and careers that is most important. Our vision, mission, values all flow from there. So in addition to our business activities, we engage in a lot of awareness campaigns. Campaigns around importance of emotional wellbeing, or importance of building psychological safety in teams, or why International Women’s day is not just a day but needs to be seen as a culmination of everything we do through the year to drive inclusion. We believe in driving collective learning and societal change with continued conversations through such platforms.
What Are the Products/services the Company Focuses on? How Are Your Services Different From Those in the Market?
Our services can be clubbed under 4 verticals-
1. Diversity & Inclusion Strategies and interventions
We truly believe that inclusive organizations are more productive and we enable our client organizations to arrive at their diversity charter and strategy, executable plans and also partner with the execution. We believe that Diversity is a fact, inclusion is a choice, Equity is action and belonging is an outcome. Helping organizations build a culture of inclusion requires a holistic approach, authentic intent and consistent efforts.
2. Bespoke learning interventions
Organizations need their HR strategy, process and policies to enable employees to deliver of the business strategy and goals. We work closely with client organizations to streamline the HR strategy, policies and practices, drive communication and socialization, internal capability to enable the same. Employees experience an organization through their managers and leaders. Building people management capabilities are critical to organizational success.
3. Leadership and Talent Development
As the socio-economic fabric is evolving, the competencies needed to succeed at work are evolving. We work with clients to enable individual contributors, managers and leaders to succeed by building the right competencies.
4. Health & Wellness Portfolio
Wellness today, includes emotional, mental and physical wellbeing. While policies and insurances can take care of the physical aspect, there still needs to awareness and life skill building around dealing with issues like anxiety, stress, burnout. With programs curated after research and with the help of clinical psychologists, we enable individuals to become emotionally resilient and hence more productive, personally and professionally.
The strength of our solutions lies in the fact that these are co-created in partnership with client teams. We do not have off-the-shelf offerings, or canned solutions or best practices that we take from one database and paste everywhere. Every client reality is different, their journey is different, employee demographics are different, culture is different, appetite and pace is different. Our solutions need to be relevant. We build relationships of trust and credibility by demonstrating impact of our interventions and hence I say with pride, “Once a client of Marching Sheep, Always a client of Marching Sheep.”
How Do You Build and Manage a Motivated and Effective Team?
Respect, Humility and Inclusion. As a leader, I find that my biggest strength is my team and the connection I share with them. I am transparent with them about my weaknesses and openly seek feedback and work on it. I am accessible to my team, for both professional and personal concerns 24*7 and I know that they would do the same for me. This honesty builds trust and support among us.
At Marching Sheep, we have a plan to make our team strong and motivated. We know that a successful team is what drives us forward. We follow strategies that keep us motivated and help us work well together.
I let my team members take charge of their own tasks. This helps them make good decisions and feel responsible. We talk a lot, and I’m always available to listen. We also learn new things all the time to stay up-to-date.
Saying “thank you” and giving helpful advice is important. This helps us grow and do better. We also work as a team, sharing ideas and coming up with new ones.
We set clear goals and make sure everyone knows what to do. We also take care of our work-life balance to stay motivated and not get too tired. Celebrating small and big wins keeps us excited about our work.
I think it’s important to help each other grow. That’s why we guide and support each other. And we don’t forget to enjoy our success too.
As the leader, I show how to act by staying true to our values. This helps everyone in the team follow the same path to success.
Where Do You Envision Yourself to Be in the Long Run and What Are Your Future Goals for Your Company?
In the long run, we envision Marching Sheep to become the most respected global leader in providing innovative and impactful solutions for in Diversity and Inclusion and Bespoke learning interventions. Our goal is to expand our reach and influence, partnering with organizations across various industries to drive positive change. We aim to be recognized not only for our commitment to creating tangible differences in people’s lives and careers but also for our contribution to promoting respect and equality on a broader scale. As we move forward, we aspire to continue designing tailored interventions that address evolving business and individual needs, ensuring that our clients achieve sustained growth and success.
Describe in Detail the Values and the Work Culture That Drives Your Organisation
We are extremely passionate about building an inclusive world. So in addition to our work with our clients, we do a lot of non-commercial work to bring awareness and equity at the societal level. We work closely with Brave Souls foundation, an NGO working towards rehabilitation of acid attack survivors. We recently worked towards raising funds for a survivor’s surgery. Additionally we have associated with Tweet foundation, another NGO that educates, skills and grooms transgender persons.
Despite not being into search and recruitment, we will support Tweet Foundation by connecting Transgender candidates to appropriate openings with our clients. This will be another non-commercial initiative. We organize several fireside chats and panel discussions to increase awareness about different disabilities, reasonable accommodation, infrastructure, mindset challenges that need to be addressed.
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